Tara Donovan ― Fieldwork

Tara Donovan's sculptures and installations are mind-bending experiences: she transforms common everyday materials like straws and index cards turning them into elaborate, room-size sculptures that are as surreal as they are beautiful

MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient Tara Donovan's otherworldly sculptures have transfixed audiences for over a decade - taking mundane materials and through clever craftsmanship, ingenuity, and repeated manipulation, the artist builds large-scale works made of rubber bands, plastic tubing, and paper plates into objects that evoke the natural world or other organic material. This volume - which accompanies a major retrospective - features an expansive selection of her most impressive and important works to date, spanning 10 years.

Curator Nora Burnett Abrams, along with a several other leading scholars of contemporary art, consider critical issues around this important artist work: issues related to labor and process, and the interplay between ethereality and monumentality, among other key themes. The book looks at several major bodies of work realized in different formats and different settings, affording the reader a glimpse into the important themes and visual languages the artist continuously explores. The book will also consider, importantly for the first time, the artist's sculptural wall works which shed light on her distinct and varied practice.

Nora Burnett Abrams, PhD, is curator at MCA Denver. She has organized solo exhibitions of Paul Sietsema, Ryan McGinley, and Adrian Ghenie, and major group shows such as Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art. Prior to MCA Denver, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. Giuliana Bruno is the Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. Jenni Sorkin is an art historian, critic, and Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Tara Donovan (b. 1969, New York) creates large-scale installations and sculptures made from everyday objects. Donovan's many accolades include the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant (2008); and first annual Calder Prize (2005), among others. For over a decade, numerous museums have mounted solo exhibitions of Donovan's work including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007-08), UCLA Hammer Museum (2004), and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1999-2000).